Coloring on a rainy day

OK. It was my birthday 10 days ago and I recieved that digital camera...and I created my first blog entry. I'm a newborn in the blogging arena but it seems such a natural evolution for someone who's written journals all her life. I'm not really a closet writer because I've written and published a number of poems and won money and blue ribbons for them as well. I've stood up in public and on a pulpit and read aloud. I also did a weekly newspaper column for the first two years that we lived in Maine and I compiled a book of them called "Balmy In Gilead". No...I've had some success as a writer but I haven't really broken through the shy crusty shell that inhibits free flight and made the 100% commitment to the art and craft of writing. I'm not sure if I ever will. But I can blog...it's free and I can feature my photos when I get the memory card I mailed away for. I just need to start somewhere and for me, beginning is always the hard part.

The day after writing that first blog entry, I headed down to Salem Ma. to visit my Mom who just came home from rehab after breaking her pelvis. First my birthday, then a visit to Mom...where the whole story of my life began. There is something about going back to the childhood home, visiting my mother and being surrounded by the old house's air...familiar things and even the dust...its like a period. The punctuation mark that indicates a stopping and then beginning. I don't have periods anymore but I do have a deeper appreciation for the way they could signal an end or fresh start. Birthdays are a good time to mark with a ritual like that and in this consumer culture, we have to come up with our own personal rituals for celebrating our lives.

I have returned from my visit with a sense of new and fresh beginnings. I come from a family of women...my poor dad had 5 daughters and a wife. My Dad is gone but his legacy lingers in Salem Ma. where the world celebrates Halloween all month. I spent time relaxing with my mom and two of my sisters. What a contrast after the intensely male weekend I had for my birthday. It makes great sense that ancient cultures had their male and female mysteries and that marriage had a time and place for mystery as well. Energy comes from these wellsprings of tribal culture and I intend to be more proactive about having all of these mysteries in better balance in my life.

A marriage is strengthened by time spent together and time spent apart. Forgiveness is easier to find when girls can have girl time and allow their men the same pleasure in terms of having guy time. It all makes sense mentally, but in order to digest the truth, you have put that balance into practice.

Salem was teeming with humanity wearing masks, hats, black make-up and all manner of get-ups. I simply went as myself...helping mom up and down stairs, fixing her prepared foods and freezing single servings. I spent time with my sister with the kind of focused attention that inevitably leads to heated discussion. As younger folks, we slammed doors and ran away from such talks. Most recently our heated discussion brought us both to tears and to a melting of anger... to a place where all was forgiven and where we could see ourselves in each other. We kind of switched costumes for a second and i think we both gained in understanding. The same exact thing happened when I got home. A rough spot with my husband became the impetus to reach across division and to choose warmth and closeness over the issues that on the surface seemed to tear us apart.

Today I celebrate love...breathing, expression with the written word, being airborn...4 juncos eating on my porch...a chipmunk eating birdseed, the vivid colors of amber, gold, yellow and that sienna color of the turning oaks. They merge their breath with mine and we are one.

October 21, 2008 Starting Fresh

There is nothing quite like going back to Mom's to set a person up for a fresh start. It is after all, where everything began. Something about breathing the air of the old house and being surrounded by the familiar works like a punctuation mark. Period. Something I no longer have due to my emergence on the other side of childbearing. Still...i find that some kind of ring marking ritual is in order when a birthday happens or anything that stands out as a day to be memorialized. There aren't enough opportunities for ritual in our American Consumer Culture and we really have to formulate our own if we are to access the deep energies beneath the surface of reality.

Hello...I'm Home

Fall colors are at their peak and I have just had a most outrageous birthday. My family gifted me with a digital camera and I have gifted myself with this blog space. After four years of intense work as a children's case manager, I find myself recovering from exhaustion but... recovering is the key word. Before I took that job, I was writing a weekly news column and dabbling in all kinds of art media. One of my favorites was making birds from paper mache and also creating masks. I find my personna as a case manager was perhaps just one of the many masks I've donned in my life, and now that I have removed it, I am discovering a sense of inner peace. I don't have to work so hard. I don't have to sacrifice my witing time, creating time, gardening time, walking time...all so I can make a living. As a lifetime journal keeper, it feels strange to sit before the sheet of empty paper now and to write from a place of peace within myself. Writing always was a processing tool...paper was for venting, ranting, arguing out a difference of opinion between two or more parts of myself. There was always a moiling, toiling quality...an anguishing over this, that or the other thing. After leaving the job in spring and moving to a new old home in summer; I am again living with my back door open to the wilderness and my front door opening onto a gracious, spacious series of mountain ranges rippling out to meet the sky. I am unemployed. Yes. Here in this orange yellow golden light of fall, both time and space open wide...an inner vista...a deep sigh of releaf...I can breathe again and as my pace relaxes, I can rediscover my own stride and my true colors can emerge. This is a blog about the beauty of the wild earth around me...the birds that fly across my field of vision and the animals that seek food nearby. It is about the everchanging weather both inside and out that makes everyday different and unfolds as a work of art in process. This is a blog about how my insides mingle with the outsides making magic happen. This blog is my lifebreath and a chance to not only write, but to share the perspective that makes me uniquely me. Unlike a series of black sketchbooks accumulating in a closet...this open writing space is open...and that means other souls can come peaking. Boy...what a change ...a long awaited and welcome change. Guess you could say not every fall is painful. An eagle freefalls in a celebration of passion...as part of his courtship ritual. I consider this blog my own freefall in celebration of passion and gratitude for being alive.